Reviewed by Dr. Dmytro Nasyrov, Founder and CTO
Pharos Production provides Cybersecurity Services that protect your applications, infrastructure and data from evolving threats.
Aligned with these frameworks. Audit reports available on request.
Reviewed by Dmytro Nasyrov
Founder and CTO
23+ years in custom software development. Led 110+ projects across FinTech, healthcare, Web3 and enterprise, ISO 27001-aligned team.
Independent pen tests give you a fresh adversarial perspective and a defensible report for customers, regulators and insurers. Internal AppSec teams give you continuous coverage and tribal knowledge integrated into the development cycle. According to NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 guidance, the strongest security postures use both: continuous internal coverage plus periodic independent audits at major releases and compliance milestones.
| Factor | Independent pen test | Internal AppSec only |
|---|---|---|
| Adversarial view | Fresh eyes; no assumptions baked in by the build team | Familiarity blind spots; harder to challenge own design |
| Defensible report | Third-party report for customers, regulators and cyber insurance | Internal memo; less weight with external stakeholders |
| Coverage cadence | Periodic deep dives at major releases or compliance milestones | Continuous; integrated into PR review and CI |
| Tooling | Mature commercial tools amortized across many engagements | Cost of building and maintaining your own tooling stack |
| Specialization | Smart contract / cloud / mobile / appsec specialists per engagement | Generalist coverage; deep specialization is expensive |
| Remediation | Findings + concrete remediation guidance + retest pass | Owned by build team; varies by engineer experience |
| Cost (year 1) | $30,000-$120,000 depending on scope and audit type | $200K-$500K loaded for 2-3 senior AppSec hires |
| Best fit | Pre-launch, post-major-release, compliance audits, customer due diligence | Continuous protection across day-to-day shipping |
Cybersecurity engagements follow Pharos Verified Delivery with audit-specific gates: discovery scopes asset inventory, threat model and regulatory requirements; build executes the structured testing or review protocol; production readiness delivers remediation guidance ranked by severity with retest pass; post-engagement supports retest after client fixes and a 30-day question window.
Pharos Verified Delivery applied to 110+ production applications since 2013
Three recent audits and reviews where the specific finding surfaced a pattern worth sharing. Client details anonymized; severity ratings follow CVSS 3.1.
FinTech web app handled $40M monthly transaction volume. Internal security review found nothing. External pen test had not been performed.
Pharos pen test found 1 critical and 7 high-severity vulnerabilities including authentication bypass and IDOR. All fixed within 3 weeks. Subsequent quarterly tests find only minor issues.
The critical was a JWT verification bug that let an attacker escalate to admin with a crafted token; IDORs let authenticated users read adjacent account balances. Fixes shipped with a permanent authorization middleware pattern the client now reuses across all services.
AWS environment grown organically over 4 years. 180+ IAM policies, 47 public S3 buckets, no baseline for least privilege. CSPM tool flagged 2,100 findings with no prioritization.
Security hardening project: 38 public buckets made private or encrypted, IAM policies consolidated to 42 role-based templates, CSPM findings reduced 81%, prioritized remediation backlog for the rest. Automated drift detection via Prowler in CI.
We triaged the 2,100 findings by exploitability and data sensitivity, weighted above the raw severity score. 340 findings were critical on paper but unreachable behind defense-in-depth; 180 were lower severity but directly exposed PHI. We fixed those first, then built CI drift detection to prevent regression.
Security testing was manual and ad-hoc. Vulnerabilities reached production. Each release required 2 weeks of manual security review and blocked engineering.
Automated CI pipeline with SAST (Semgrep), dependency scanning (Dependabot, Trivy), secrets detection (gitleaks), container scanning and SBOM generation. Release security review reduced to 4 hours. Zero critical vulnerabilities in production for 14 months.
Semgrep rules scoped to the client codebase, Dependabot with auto-PR remediation for safe upgrades, gitleaks on every push, weekly Trivy scan of container images. Findings route directly to the engineer who owns the code, not a shared security inbox.
Client names anonymized under NDA. Full case studies at /cases/.
We decline roughly 30% of RFPs we receive. Forcing a bad fit costs both sides 3-6 months and damages outcomes. Here is how we think about scope:
Not every project needs a full pen test. Sometimes a threat model session catches issues before code is written. Sometimes a SAST baseline plus dependency scanning is the right level of investment. We start every security engagement by asking what you are actually trying to protect and recommend the appropriate depth - not the most expensive option. We have closed engagements with "a 2-hour threat model will save you $40K on a pen test" as the deliverable.
Pharos security portfolio
Ranges we consistently see across our security delivery portfolio.
Mature teams cover 80-92% of MITRE ATT&CK technique IDs observed in their threat model with EDR or log-based detection.
Critical CVE patch SLA hit rate ranges 78-94% on teams with automated patching; drops to 42-65% on manual processes.
1.5-4 hours mean time to recovery for P1 security incidents on teams with documented runbooks and weekly tabletop exercises.
SBOM generation rate went from 18% of engagements in 2023 to 73% in 2025. Expect 95%+ in 2026 once EU and SEC attestation requirements bite.
6-12 weeks for baseline security hardening and SOC 2 readiness scaffolding; 12-24 weeks for zero trust architecture rollout on existing stacks[7].
Application security and enterprise defense are being reshaped on three fronts: default zero trust, mandatory supply-chain attestation and AI-augmented SOC triage.
Zero trust architecture shifts from large-enterprise category to default expectation for mid-market SaaS. Identity-first access control replaces network-perimeter assumptions even on internal services[9].
SBOM, SLSA attestation and dependency signing move from advisory (SEC and EU NIS2) to buyer-required by 2027. Teams without build-chain provenance lose enterprise contracts.
LLM-assisted triage and enrichment compress mean time to investigation materially, shifting SOC staffing toward investigation engineering versus alert handling.
Every security engagement we ship runs against the same four-dimension readiness evaluation before handover.
Evaluated on MFA coverage, privilege model, session binding and break-glass path. Phishing-resistant MFA on privileged accounts; least-privilege enforced at service and DB layers; documented break-glass with time-bounded access[9].
Evaluated on EDR coverage, centralized logging, MTTR and runbook completeness. EDR on all endpoints and servers; centralized logging with 90-day hot retention; MTTR under 4h for P1; runbooks for the top 20 alert patterns.
Evaluated on SBOM coverage, dependency scan cadence and signed builds. SBOM generated on every build; dependency scan run daily; critical CVE patch SLA 7 days; production builds signed and verified[11].
Evaluated on ISO 27001 and SOC 2 control mapping, evidence automation and audit trail. ISO 27001 or SOC 2 controls mapped to code and process; evidence collection automated; tamper-evident audit trail retained 12 months[7].
Production post-mortem
This example is published with the client's permission. During a July 2025 audit of a FinTech client's environment, full HTTP request bodies were being routed to a centralized logging stack without PII scrubbing. Credit card numbers and partial SSNs surfaced in observability logs accessible to 40+ engineers. The exposure triggered a GDPR notification deadline before our audit caught it. The root cause was missing PII scrubbing at the log-shipper layer.
PII redaction now enforced at log-shipper layer for every engagement. PII fingerprint scan added to pre-production checklist. Observability data classification reviewed quarterly against data-sensitivity policy.
Published record
Technical articles, comparison guides and methodology deep-dives we write from our own delivery experience.
Trusted by Coinbase, Consensys, Core Scientific, MicroStrategy, Gate.io and 10+ more Web3 and enterprise platforms
16+ partnersOur 16 technology partners include:
Founder and CTO Pharos Production
I design and build reliable software solutions - from lightweight apps to high-load distributed systems and blockchain platforms.
PhD in Artificial Intelligence, MSc in Computer Science (with honors), MSc in Electronics & Precision Mechanics.
13 years in architecture of great software solutions tailored to customer needs for startups and enterprises
23 years of practical enterprise customized software production experience
Lecturer at the National Kyiv Polytechnic University
Doctor of Philosophy in Artificial Intelligence
Master's degree in Computer Science, completed with excellence
Master's degree in Electronics and precision mechanics engineering
Pharos Production works in three engagement models, from a focused PoC to a production MVP to a full enterprise platform, with typical budgets from $10,000 to $400,000+ depending on scope and complexity.
Focused validation of your riskiest technical assumption with a working spike and a clear build-or-pivot recommendation.
Production-ready first version with core flows, real backend and the integrations to onboard first paying users.
Full-scale build with architecture, DevOps, QA, security and long-term evolution.
Prices vary based on project scope, complexity, timeline and requirements. Hourly rates range from $35 to $75 depending on role and seniority. Contact us for a personalized estimate.
Need extra hands on your software project? Our developers can jump in at any stage - from architecture to auditing - and integrate seamlessly with your team to fill any technical gaps.
Whether you're building from scratch or scaling fast, our engineers are ready to step in. You stay in control, and we handle the code.
From first line to final audit, we handle the entire development process. We will deliver secure, production-ready software, while you can focus on your business.
Our engineers work with 187+ technologies across blockchain, backend, frontend, mobile and DevOps - chosen for production reliability and performance.
Our engineers work with 187+ technologies across 10 categories: Frameworks, AI, Blockchains, DevOps, Clouds, Databases, Brokers, Tests, Programming, UI/UX.
Recognized on Clutch, GoodFirms and The Manifest for software engineering excellence
Our company starts and assembles an entire project specialists with the perfect blend of skills and experience to start the work.
We'll design, build and launch your MVP, ensuring it meets the core requirements of your software solution.
We'll create a complete software solution that is custom-made to meet your exact specifications.
Our company will be right there with you, keeping your software solution running smoothly, fixing issues and rolling out updates.
Synthesis of public application security data: pen-test cost ranges, critical bug density, common vulnerability classes 2024-2026, threat-modeling cost, IR MTTR - drawn from NIST CSF, MITRE ATT&CK, OWASP ASVS, Verizon DBIR and named industry cohort.
Cybersecurity guide for startups and SMBs in 2026. Top 10 security measures, compliance basics (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA), budget guide and cost-effective tools.
What compliance certifications does a FinTech product need? The required certifications depend on your product type, target market and data handling practices. At minimum, most FinTech products need SOC 2 Type II for data security, PCI DSS if handling payment card data and GDPR compliance for EU users. PCI DSS compliance checklist PCI DSS applies […]
OWASP Agentic Top 10 explained: the ASI01 to ASI10 taxonomy with real incidents and mitigations for AI agent risks, from a cybersecurity team.
Securing AI agents in production with a six-layer defense architecture, grounded in the March 2026 LiteLLM supply-chain attack and Gartner incident forecasts.
Application security checklist for 2026: a phased 0-30, 30-90 and 90+ day roadmap for secrets, containers, dependencies and AI credentials, backed by Orca Security 2026 data.
AI supply chain security explained: slopsquatting, model poisoning, NullifAI and ShaiHulud, from SBOM to AIBOM and the defenses that work in 2026.
AI agents that read messages, call tools and move money create a new fraud surface. A taxonomy of the attack patterns emerging against agent workflows, prompt injection, deepfake-assisted social engineering, memory poisoning, tool abuse, with the defenses that work, grounded in Gartner's 2025-2026 incidence data.
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A focused penetration test typically costs between $8,000 and $30,000 depending on scope, while ongoing managed security or DevSecOps engagements run on monthly retainers. Pricing reflects the number of applications, network size, compliance framework targeted and whether the work is a one-time assessment or a continuous program with retesting and remediation support.
We perform web application, API, mobile, network, cloud and internal infrastructure penetration testing using black-box, gray-box and white-box approaches. Engagements follow OWASP Testing Guide and PTES methodologies, combine manual exploitation with tooling and conclude with a prioritized findings report, proof-of-concept evidence and a remediation retest.
We help teams prepare for and pass SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS and GDPR assessments. Work includes gap analysis against the relevant controls, evidence collection, policy and control implementation, security testing and readiness reviews. We align technical hardening with auditor expectations so the assessment itself goes smoothly.
A standard web application penetration test takes 1 to 3 weeks including reporting, while a full compliance audit preparation for SOC 2 or ISO 27001 can span 2 to 4 months. Timelines depend on application count, environment complexity, the depth of threat modeling required and how much remediation is needed before the formal assessment.
DevSecOps integration embeds security into your CI/CD pipeline with SAST scanning of source code, DAST scanning of running applications, software composition analysis for dependencies and secrets detection. We configure tools such as Semgrep, OWASP ZAP, Snyk and Trivy, set policy gates and train engineers to triage findings without slowing delivery.
Threat modeling maps your system's data flows, trust boundaries and assets to identify likely attack paths before code is written or shipped. We typically run it during design and major architecture changes using STRIDE and attack tree techniques, producing a ranked list of threats with concrete mitigations the engineering team can implement.
Yes. Security code review manually inspects source for injection flaws, broken authentication, insecure cryptography, access control gaps and unsafe dependency usage that automated scanners miss. We combine SAST output with expert review of authentication, authorization and data handling logic, then deliver findings mapped to OWASP and CWE categories with fix guidance.
Every engagement concludes with an executive summary, a technical findings report ranked by severity using CVSS, proof-of-concept evidence, remediation guidance and a retest to confirm fixes. Compliance engagements add control mapping, policy artifacts and audit-ready evidence. We walk your team through the report so findings translate into prioritized engineering work.
Cybersecurity rewards teams that treat identity, detection and supply chain as first-class engineering concerns rather than compliance checkboxes[8]. Zero trust, SBOM attestation and AI-augmented triage are the three areas that separate teams ready for the 2026 threat landscape from teams that have not touched their threat model since the last audit.
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1 dayAfter we chat about your goals and needs, we'll craft a comprehensive proposal detailing the project scope, team, timeline and budget
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1-2 daysAs soon as the contract is signed, our dedicated team will jump into action on your project!
Same dayHeadquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada. Engineering office in Kyiv, Ukraine.
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